Léon la lune (1956)

Directed by

Alain Jessua

Genre

documentary film

Country

France

Runtime

16 min

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This short film follows an old vagrant through Paris from day into night. It captures his daily routines and the city around him in a poetic style.

observationalgentlepoeticwanderingintimatequieteverydaydocumentary

What happens

Léon la lune (English: Leon the Moon) is a 1956 French short documentary film directed by Alain Jessua. The film won the Prix Jean Vigo in 1957. The film documents an old drifter in Paris in the poetic realist style. Jessua was inspired by Jean-Paul Clébert's book Paris Insolite (1952) and decided to make a film about a clochard or tramp. The poet and novelist Robert Giraud, an expert on the Parisian underworld, introduced Jessua to Léon la Lune, a vagrant whose real name was Leon Boudeville, and suggested that they follow him from day to night. After completing the film Giraud showed it to the poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert who wrote an introduction and asked Henri Crolla to contribute some music to the film. Léon la lune also appeared in the series Clochards by Robert Doisneau, the pioneer of humanist photojournalism. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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